Hibino Shintarou is seven when his heart flutters and cheeks flush with colour in the hand of Miura Souta, who gazes at him with innocent, wide eyes a shade of brown, so brilliant a colour that it looks like molten gold as the sun dapples his pale skin. Souta's cheeks rise in a smile that can rival the sun, tall grass waving around the pair and a circle of red and swirling white in between his fingers.
In that moment, Italy evaporates into the air, and Shintarou is living again. That burden is brushed off his hands by the gentle way Souta brushes dirt off his soft, small hands, breath smelling like mint, offering the small circle sweet to the young boy.
The only person who can touch his head is he himself only, and the only person who can touch his hands is Miura Souta, with his sweet brown eyes and messy black hair, tied away from his face.
Hibino Shintarou is a child again, happy and unburdened and free and everything in between, when Souta pops the peppermint between his lips and tells Shintarou stories of living like a normal boy. When the sun sets, he watches the way radiant gold and red and orange sets his profile ablaze, colours his sweet brown eyes into gold more valuable than any metal in the world.
Come next morning, Shintarou wakes in the Tokyo Imperial Palace, and Souta is a memorial service.
✧࿓☾
Souta meets Shintarou when they are five.
"You smell weird."
That is what Shintarou first tells the raven-haired boy, sniffing at the area around him with a quizzical— and disconcerted— expression. Souta recoils, brings his shirt up to his nose, and then he remembers that his father had picked him up today, hugged him close. Apologised, and Souta looked up to find translucent glass bottles on the table.
(The house had smelled of his father. What was it that he had drank? It sounded something like ear, that was all he knew.)
Shintarou raises a brow, stepping away from Souta. "Did you shower yesterday?"
Souta's brows scrunch together. "What?! I did!"
Grey eyes fill with doubt. "Y'know, liars are carted off to get punished..."
Souta crosses his arms, huffing indignantly. "Maybe I used a different soap from you! Who knows, maybe I'm cleaner than you!" Souta turns on his heel, frowning unhappily, looking to make friends with someone else, anyone else other than this pompous rich brat whose father probably smelled like soap and cologne.
(The kindergarten teacher's face clouds over in worry when she smells the tang of alcohol on the long-haired boy's clothes. Later, she will find out that he is a Miura, and that the family's huge fortune had been gambled away by Miura Junichiro, he who fell from grace.)
✧࿓☾
Shintarou's face clouds over with annoyance when he is faced with the back of Miura Souta. It seems like the shorter boy has crossed his arms, and his hair, unusually long for a boy, is tied back into a braid, hanging below his shoulders. Miura smells different now. He smells like mint. As if someone had rubbed mint leaves all over his body.
Shintarou suppresses a groan when the boy refuses to face him. "C'mon, we have to go!"
"I hate badminton even more than I hate you." Is the sulky response from the boy. Shintarou bristles.
"I hate you more than I hate badminton, but I'm not gonna be childish like you!" The blue-haired boy reaches up, and yanks Souta's braid.
Souta cries out, and his hands immediately slap Shintarou's fist away. He spins around, regarding the navy-haired boy angrily. "That hurt!"
Between pursed lips. a "pff" escapes. Souta's brown eyes narrow as Shintarou begins to laugh at Souta's irked expression, and Souta stares at Shintarou, stunned.
Is he for real?
"What's so funny?" Souta demands. "What is?"
Shintarou continues to cackle.
Souta extends his hand, and pulls on the lock of hair that sticks out of the top of the howling boy.
"Ow!" Shintarou jumps back. The humour's gone from his face, and he jabs an accusing finger onto Souta's chest. "What was that?"
Souta innocently blinks at the boy. "What? It's funny." He starts to laugh, ridiculously artificial "AHAHA"s that an irate Shintarou unamusedly listens to, mouth curved down in displeasure.
But it's hard to keep his arms crossed and brows narrowed together. Shintarou's features, out of his own control, soften by the second, and soon, both boys are giggling together, shoulders shaking in genuine mirth.
It seems as if they are friends now.
✧࿓☾
Shintarou and Souta, Souta and Shintarou. They are friends now.
It's an interesting revelation, really. On the walk home from kindergarten, Souta sometimes wonders how he even hated Shintarou in the first place. He has never smiled so much in another boy's presence, simply basking in the moment, comforting and wild, baseballs hitting faces square in the nose and hands linked together, arms swinging merrily on field trips and in playgrounds.
They are the best of friends.
"If you leave, we're never gonna be friends again."
Shintarou frowns at Souta's glum statement. His heart twists, not because of the words, but because of the crestfallen expression that Souta is wearing. Perhaps his words are roundabout, but Souta is very against the mere prospect of his best friend leaving him.
(Like his father, whose beer-reeking body is now ashes in an urn, and how Souta has left his father's house and now lives in a big, nice-smelling house with a nice lady who smells like daises and who apparently is his aunt. She won't leave him, will she?)
"Oto-san wants me to leave," Shintarou says, referring to his father, who Souta still doesn't know is the emperor. He only knows that Shintarou's father is a very important person, more important than his own father. (Or maybe he does know. Shintarou doesn't care.) Perhaps that was why Shintarou's father wasn't an urn in some random cremtorium somehwere.
Souta's eyes fill with tears. It is not manly to cry, nor is it manly to beg. But Souta cannot control his emotions like the adult he is supposed to be, the man of the house that his father used to be. Shintarou stumbles back from the way Souta throws himself at him, arms wrapping tightly around him, as if he were trying to make sure that Shintarou didn't slip from his grip.
"Don't leave me," Souta's words turn into sobs, and the tears that he had been vehemently holding him soak Shintarou's shoulder, and Shintarou can feel in every single crevice of his body the way Souta's body shakes. "You're the only person in the world that hasn't left me yet."
Shintarou's nose is stuffy and blocked, and his grey eyes burn with warm tears. He doesn't want to leave Tokyo, leave the Imperial Palace, he doesn't want to leave and never come back like his little sister had, doesn't want to disappear and never come back like Mina did.
But he is still so incredibly fortunate that everyone else in his family is still here, right? Even though Oto-san has changed and he is sending Shintarou to Italy and sending Junta to China and he has given up on finding Mina. Even though Shintarou was going to leave the only boy in the world who could give him comfort in a time of turmoil like this.
He hugs Souta back with his whole might. As if Souta might burn away and fall at his feet into paper-white ashes.
"I'll come back, Souta. I'll come back."
The sun sits high in the sky.
✧࿓☾
Shintarou sits with his back against the bathroom floor, hands coiled tightly around one another and glasses sitting beside him. It is so incredibly cold, and his shoulder tingles and crawls like there are legs of an insect walking on his skin, melting through his pores and contaminating him from the outside in.
He doesn't want to see anything. Hear anything. Taste anything. Smell anything. Feel anything. Feel the way the room closes in around him and consumes him.
The bathroom stalls are empty. He sits at the foot of the hall, unable to enter them lest those small spaces go and close in and squeeze him alive, and he does not dare leave, where seven-year-old children will wrap around his skin and consume him.
The bathroom door swings open, and Shintarou bites his lip, unable to stop shaking. Was this kid also going to touch him? Was he also going to ridicule him and throw his glasses into the toilet bowl, maybe even start cursing at him in Italian?
It was a horrible idea to return to school. Shintarou never should have left the palace. He should have asked the chauffeur to bring him back home before the car even drove into the kindergarten gates.
There was no use in going any more, anyway. There was only one week left till the holidays, and then everyone would be in elementary school, elite schools where everyone in this kindergarten who were all supposedly gifted would go to acceleration courses.
"Shintarou?" The voice is soft, hesitant, and Shintarou's fingers grip the hair on the crown of his head, and he wonders why he even made that promise to him.
There were no such things as friends. In Italy, the kids didn't know who his father was, who he was, and bullied him for his appearance, his name, threw his glasses and ripped the pages off his textbooks. When they found out who his father was, they groveled at his feet and begged Shintarou for forgiveness they did not deserve.
Here, everyone knew that Emperor Seimu's son was called Shintarou, and that he attended this school. When they were younger, they treated him normally, like one would do so to a normal classmate.
When he came back, it was all different. It seemed as if one year had made lots of new realisations, including the whole student body begging for his attention, asking if he could give money and houses, asking him whether he remembered them and how they should get expensive gifts from Italy as a thank-you for remembering that he studied at this school.
And then one girl had slapped a hand onto his shoulder, and the next thing he knew, she was on the floor, stunned, and people were staring at him, shock etched into each and every one of their expressions.
And then he ran.
But this is worse. So much worse.
In the crowd of faces, features blurring into one another, Shintarou could not spot any black braid, could not spot any whiff of peppermint.
(Maybe Souta had left him, too. Now Shintarou had no one left.)
Shintarou does not respond to his name. He cannot. He is unable to.
"Shintarou?" Shintarou recognises his voice in an instant. It has been an year, but an year cannot erase fond memories spent with someone who Shintarou had grown to love like family. "Are you alright?"
He is not. He has never been alright ever since he had left Japan last year.
He does not know what he wants Souta to do. He does not know what he will do if Souta approaches him. He does not know what he will do if Souta tries to hold a conversation with him.
There is a long pause.
And when Shintarou decides to stand up and leave the bathroom, unable to stay there left in nothing but a destructive cloud of his thoughts, he finds a box of swirling red and white sweets on the sink.
A yellow post-it covers the 'MINT' on the box so that the box reads 'PEPPER'.
Souta's handwriting has changed, Shintarou notices. He picks the box up, reads the note.
Welcome back, Shin. I missed you.
Shintarou's shoulders start to shake. Warm tears roll down his cheeks.
✧࿓☾
When Shintarou returns home, and sits in his room with the box of peppermints held tightly against his chest, simply staring at the creamy white shoji doors of his room.
That night, Shintarou has peppermints for dinner.
He cries again. Sucks on the minty sweets, as he thinks back to when he wasn't broken.
✧࿓☾
Recovery is a slow, painful process.
Shintarou can never think of people the same way again. His relationship with his family has been completely upended, and he can't face Junta the same way again. Why was it that Junta was whole and unharmed in China when Shintarou had been put through hell and back and Mina presumed dead for the third year? Why was it that Junta could still smile and touch and make memories without a shadow behind them?
(He spends nights crying, sometimes. He cries far too often nowadays. He wakes up from odd dreams and drifting memories of That Man and wonders why, out of all men, Mr Honda had to be like That.)
He can't even speak to Souta the same way again. He thinks back to how happy Souta had made him feel. He thinks back to how Mr Honda had snapped Shintarou in half.
He wonders when Souta will snap him.
Shintarou is glass. His father throws him against the wall daily, and the glass's hairline cracks widen and widen every day. He wonders why his father must be so cruel. He wonders why his father still wants to break him when he had already done so, so many times in Italy.
(He blames his father for everything. That Man is now his father. He blames That Man for everything that he did to make Mr Honda This way.)
Souta is so ridiculously patient. He is so stupidly persistent. He doesn't touch Shintarou, doesn't force himself onto Shintarou like everyone else does. He treats Shintarou as if are not glass, as if he are not someone he can siphon money and positions from, but as a friend. As a best friend.
Recovery is painful. Souta picks himself up, far too mature for his age, over and over again, even when Shintarou snaps at him.
Even when he goes too far.
( "Why are you trying to suck up to me? Is it because you're an orphan now that your alcoholic father has kicked the bucket, and now you want something from me? Are you going to betray me like your father betrayed my uncle and steal my family's fortune?"
The knife had twisted. Souta had recoiled. Hurt, so much hurt in his expression.
"You're the only person I have left, Shintarou," Souta had murmured in a voice so small that Shintarou's heart dropped. And then, before Shintarou could say anything, Souta had left.
The next day, he came back. As if Shintarou's harsh words had been only a momentary pain. )
And, well, Shintarou knows that respect goes both ways. It's so incredibly hard to open himself up again, but he sees the empty box of peppermints, and that yellow post-it on his desk. He hadn't been able to bring himself to dispose of the empty box, even after he had finished eating the sweets.
It is a week after Shintarou had lashed out at Souta. He is crawling with guilt, and Souta is more diminished. He tries not to show that Shintarou's words had hit him where it hurt, but the hurt is evident. And this is truly all Shintarou's fault.
"Shintarou, do you wanna head out?" Souta and Shintarou, classmates in the same elementary school. Souta, who everyone in the school called the prince's puppy - a name that prickled uncomfortably at Shintarou, and a name that Souta didn't let get to him. "The weather's really good today."
On a normal day, Souta would be doing nothing but talking to a wall. His voice is cheery, bright, and sometimes he stops by Shintarou's desk to make small talk with him. Shintarou has noticed that he didn't make overwhelmingly frequent visits to him, respecting his own personal space.
He is Shintarou's friend. So why can't Shintarou let that be drilled into his head?
Shintarou clears his throat, hands balling into fists. He summons the courage to speak, and when he does so, his voice cracks on the last word. "Uh- yeah, sure. Let's play— badminton."
Souta doesn't miss a beat. He sounds normal, but Shintarou can catch a note of something— excitement— in his voice.
"Badminton," he breathes, and Shintarou can't help but be brought back to the time when they had both somehow become friends— yanking each other's hair, a petty fight when the teacher had paired Shintarou up with Souta. "Yeah. Let's go to the PE store first!"
✧࿓☾
The truth is that Shintarou is an absolute idiot. How could he think that Souta would use him like that? How could he think that Souta was anything but his friend?
Days melt into weeks. Weeks fly into months. Shintarou has a therapist now, and his therapist is a nice lady who treats Shintarou like he is her equal, and he feels comfortable around her. Souta's derogatory nickname - the prince's puppy - along with the people who had called him that not only sorrowfully apologised to Souta, but were also expelled from the school.
Recovery is a slow process. But with Souta by his side, Shintarou thinks that he'll be fixed sooner or later.
No, he knows.
✧࿓☾
Souta brings Shintarou to a field by his house, where no one goes to maintain the long, weedlike blades of grass that grow up to Shintarou's waist, and the acerbic tang of car fumes fades away into the comforting scent of grass and fragrant flowers, and sometimes, the pair spend their afternoons there.
It's so very peaceful, the breeze rustling the grass and the occasional field mouse scurrying across the clearing. Shintarou sits on the grass, flowers plucked at his feet, and weaves white lillies and pearly orchids into Souta's hair, elbow-length and silky black, tied back half-up half-down and now braided by Shintarou.
This is the closest Shintarou has ever come to touching someone. Any closer than that and Shintarou is still unable to muster the courage, still unable to rid himself of the vision of Mr Honda and the coffin.
It is nearing six thirty, and the clear blue sky has begun to set, brilliant shades of oranges and reds bleeding into one another. The sun is a radiant orb of scintillating gas, a beautiful golden sphere that casts the sky into a warm glow and makes Souta's eyes golden.
"The sunset is beautiful, isn't it?" Souta asks, but he isn't looking at the sky anymore. He's gazing at Shintarou, his golden eyes so earnest, so sweet, and heat rises to Shintarou's cheeks and there is nothing but exhilaration in his system.
The sunset is beautiful, but Souta shines more.
Shintarou reaches for Souta's hand, which braces his body, extended back behind him. Souta's hair is full of flowers, beautiful white petals glowing in shades of scarlets and hesperidium, and he is Shintarou's everything.
Shintarou's shaking fingers find his, and Souta's eyes widen, and goosebumps rise along Shintarou's arms. It feels so weird to be touching someone else, and it is so bizarre that it is Shintarou himself that takes the initiative for skinship. It is an odd feeling, Souta's hand, cold and smooth and Shintarou's sweaty palm on the back of his hand, but Souta is smiling and Shintarou is smiling and there is nothing but adoration that fills Souta's gaze when he shifts closer and wraps his fingers around Shintarou's hand.
He never loved Mr Honda.
He loves Souta.
✧࿓☾
Shintarou is only seven.
He is only seven.
Seven.
Seven.
Seven.
In so many cultures seven is a symbol of good luck and fortune, but what sort of twisted fate has Shintarou been given that when he is seven that the boy he loves, that the boy who is his best friend and nothing less dies?
He's gone to join Mina, his mother murmurs softly, as if that were a word of consolation.
Shintarou's little sister had disappeared when Shintarou was only four. He probably loved Mina, but she was gone too soon for him to make fond memories with her. Souta disappeared when he had only just got him back. Souta had disappeared the day after Shintarou and he had watched the sunset, had disappeared the day after Shintarou had held hands with him.
The search begins.
It lasts for months, and Shintarou is desperate, so desperate that he goes on his knees and begs his father to persist and find Souta and bring him back to him. When he finds Souta he's going to ask him to live with him in the palace and he's going to cherish Souta like nothing else in the world can ever take him from him.
Shintarou wades through stagnant ponds and His legs and arms swell with mosquito bites as he searches every inch of the field, desperate to find any trace of Souta. He plucks flowers and stuffs them behind his ear and yells his name and threatens him to come back until the butler comes and escorts him away and Shintarou is a mess.
That day Shintarou is on the laptop, and he is looking through flower meanings and is looking for flowers that mean return, when he comes across the meaning of two flowers; the white lily and the white orchid.
That day, Shintarou begins to crumble a little faster inside.
Those two flowers are common funeral flowers, after all.
✧࿓☾
The morning after Shintarou realises that the flowers he had braided into Souta's hair had meanings and uses he could never find anything but ironic, the search for the missing Miura Souta is called off, and his father informs him that Souta has probably been taken by men under Miura Enterprise, due to how Souta's father is the man who had gambled away all of the former business magnate's revenue.
That night, dinner is a depressing affair. Shintarou stares at his food, and can't help but wonder what it would be like to die. Then he could join Souta. He could join his one and only best friend who had done nothing but love him and he wouldn't have to see anyone else other than him ever again.
That night, six-year-old Junta, who has become rather interested in Chinese culture after his short time there, decides to try and fill up the gaping, awkward void of silence. "Did you know that the seventh month in the lunar calendar is the Hungry Ghost Festival, where the gates of heaven and hell opens, and allows ghosts to eat and drink in the living world? Maybe Mina and Sho—"
Rage. Something snaps in Shintarou. Everything falls on him. Shouta is gone. He is gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone like Mr Honda. Gone like Mina. Gone like everything in the world that Shintarou hasn't pushed away.
When Shintarou comes back into his body, his chest is heaving, and he is shaking all over.
Junta is curled up on the floor, clutching his arm, ice cubes pooling on the floor before him, the floor dark with soba soup. The young boy's hair and arms are soaked with soba soup and noodle, and he is clutching his left arm, which is swollen.
Souta is— was— left-handed.
In Shintarou's hand is the ceramic bowl in which Shintarou's soba noodles used to be in. The hand holding the bowl is raised over his head, and Junta doesn't dare look Shintarou in the eye.
The bowl falls from Shintarou's numb fingers, and cracks as it meets the floor below.
Cracks like Shintarou.
"Hibino Shintarou." His name is an enraged yell as Hibino Seimu rises from his seat, and Shintarou's father brusquely shoves Shintarou away, kneeling before Junta, hands on his younger son's arms.
Shintarou has gone too far. Remorse immediately flow in as the shock and rage melt away, and Shintarou looks at the scene with wide eyes. "Ot-"
Seimu cuts him off with a tone of heavy finality. "Leave."
He leaves without a word.
✧࿓☾
Miura Souta is a damn betrayer. He does not deserve to be remembered. He does not deserve to be loved. He does not deserve to be found.
The therapist is gone. Shintarou cannot stand seeing her disgusting face. He cannot bear being in Junta's presence, because he is disgusting and nauseating. He cannot return to school, where Souta's goddamn presence looms everywhere, from the pitiful glances everyone gives to him to the way the school closes in on him.
Shintarou hates Souta.
How dare he leave. How dare he get himself a memorial service.
How dare he die.
✧࿓☾
Shintarou is fourteen.
It has been two years since Mina came back, and Shintarou doesn't admit the relief he feels when he sees the girl. She is unrecognisable, but when he looks at old pictures of her, the latest from eight years ago, he can see the mole under her left eye, can see the mole on the back of her right hand.
At least she came back, unlike fucking Miura who decided to fucking die.
At least she came back, unlike fucking Oka-san who decided to board that blasted plane.
(Why couldn't it be Oto-san?)
✧࿓☾
Grease smears on Shintarou's cheek, and the fourteen-year-old stares at his creation.
A small, waist-height robot with a white body stands before him, spherical face and misshapen rectangular ears on the sides of its face, a grey board over its forehead, hands white gloves with sectioned-out fingers forming two hands. It has a small mouth in the shape of an upside-down triangle, and long ovular circles a shade of black are dotted with white - forming the eyes.
Beside it stands another robot, this one with fully-formed legs unlike the wheeled platform that the first robot has, its circular head sectioned with a black board that makes the face seem rectangular.
They are Shintarou's lifeblood.
Shintarou has already programmed these two, the bulkier robot with the black screen programmed to respond to Honda - which Shintarou had decided to name it as. Swiveling to face his computer, the navy-haired boy pulls up the code he had used to programme Honda, and with bated breath, he turns it on.
It powers on with a small whir, and its empty black eyes light up.
A small smile forms on Shintarou's lips. "Hello, Honda."
Honda's arm rises with a whir, and it pauses mid-air as if not knowing what to do with it. The robot then steps forward, toward Shintarou, and its arm lowers again.
Honda works.
Shintarou then moves on to the next robot. He powers it on, and watches the light come into the robot's eyes. He parts his lips, tries to find a name for this one. "S-"
Shintarou breaks off with a flinch. He exhales, watches as the robot simply watches Shintarou as he fumbles for words. Shintarou reaches for the box of peppermints beside his laptop, thinking of a name for this robot, when his gaze shifts to the box.
He remembers the placement of That post-it.
"Pepper," he breathes. Turning to the robot, he speaks to it. "Hello, Pepper. I'm Shintarou."
"Good evening, Shintarou. It's three hours till sunset," Pepper responds, its voice robotic and high-pitched, almost boyish.
The sunset.
"Where's the best place to see it?"
✧࿓☾
What the actual fuck is this?
Shintarou has no more reason to hate Germany than due to fucking Prince Leon of that blasted, stupid country. That is reason enough.
Shintarou cannot stand his stoic attitude, the way he challenges that the human mind is superior to a robot's brain.
He cannot stand the way his eyes are a shade of brown so cloying that they shine gold in the sunset.
He hopes that the blasted prince will leave the fucking school once his thirty days of shame are over.
✧࿓☾
a/n - anyways, emo time for the jap royalty!
oc incorporations with K07 events